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Thursday, August 30, 2007
Just How Wild is That Salmon?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
The “New Yorker” magazine’s food issue is out this coming week, and among articles from Calvin Trillin about Singapore street food and Jane Kramer’s profile of food writer Claudia Roden, who spent 16 years writing “The Book of Jewish Food,” is a cartoon, from Mick Stevens, of a waiter telling a couple at a table in a restaurant “Your meal will be out shortly. The salmon was a little wilder than we anticipated.”
Hilarious, of course. But it also hits a nerve for someone who eats out a lot and reads a lot of menus. Just how truthful is the restaurant being when it describes fish as wild caught? I see all the time menu notes on how everything is “made from scratch,” when it’s obvious everything isn’t. Are those heirloom tomatoes really heirloom, or are they from Sysco? Even the term organic — which now brings with it very specific requirements from the FDA — is bandied about like nobody’s business. These terms seem more trendy than truthful.
Do you trust the menus you read when you’re dining out? How truthful do you think a restaurant should have to be when it comes to menu writing and description?
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